Ribbon & Lace
by L. Catherine Dion
Summary: A kidnapping victim is found, frozen, outside her family's home in Los Angeles. She won't be the only one. Crews and Reese must race against the clock to save lives, and catch a frighteningly clever killer. How do you catch a madman who leaves no traces?
1. Priceless

A droplet worked its way from the corner of her left eye, streaking red in its wake as it inched over the bridge of her nose and down her cheek. It clung precariously to her chin for a long moment and finally dropped off. He watched it for as long as he dared, reveling in his artistry. The silence hung thick, impenetrable, and the world was yet unmoved by what he'd left. Night had yet to break its long slumber, but it was disturbed nonetheless. His precious girl, his love, was a gift left for those who had known her.

They would appreciate him.

_Drip_.

White lace was beginning to soak red.

Stillness.

They would love him.

_Drip._

A door creaked open, a coffee cup shattered, and someone began to scream.

He was gone a second later, a soft, fond tug of a grin lingering across his face. No one could find him. No one could see him. The screaming came with him and he drank it in eagerly, starved for the attention it gave him. He was satisfied, though. Happy. His first masterpiece had come to its showcase-they would see how good it really was in time. How perfect it was. How wonderfully divine he had made her in his brilliance. They would see.

He'd left her for them.

For his adoring fans.

She was wrapped in ribbon and lace, utter perfection.

_For them_.


	2. The Eyes Have It

Gravel crunched under her boots as she stepped out of the car, her thumb brushing her badge and then her gun as if making sure they were both secure. Annette Langly, 32, a nurse at East Los Angeles Children's Hospital, was thawing against the tree in the back. Dani Reese watched the crime scene unit and the medical examiner's team move carefully through the house, which was neat and orderly. Nothing seemed out of place inside the home, save for the shattered cup of coffee that had soaked through the magazine Camilla Langly had dropped when she had caught sight of her daughter's body. A camera flashed, drawing her contemplative gaze toward the tree itself. The body wasn't visible from anywhere but from the back porch door-something that struck her as odd. It was as if the perp had crafted the moment as private between the _mother_ and either himself or Annette.

Camilla had been taken to the hospital moments before Reese had arrived. From the radio chatter, it sounded like she'd had a seizure of some sort. Reese didn't blame the woman one bit, considering it must have been the shock of her life to wake up and find her only daughter murdered like that. Jim, the father, had gone with her in the ambulance. Reese mad a note to stop by and see how they were both doing and if they could stand an interview. Crews said Jim been shocked silent and hadn't said a thing since the body was discovered, but Reese needed the man talking. They'd been the first on-scene and she needed their statements-especially the mothers, _if_ the woman remembered.

Her partner stood on the porch, his head tilted slightly.

"It took alotta time," he said, not glancing away, but instinctively knowing who was standing behind him without a glance. Crews spoke quietly, carefully, and not precisely _at_ her. "To get her set up like that. It must have taken him a long time. I'd have taken a long time to get it just right." And then, after a moment of silence, he sighed. "That's a long, long time for no one to see him, Reese."

"Most people are asleep," Reese said with a frown, already striding forward to get a look at the body. "Never know, someone might have seen _something_." It just meant that they'd have to canvas the neighborhood later after the initial paperwork had been filed.

"It reminds me of art." Crews hung back just a little and she angled him a fleeting glance. "The way she's sitting there." He pointed as he squatted down next to the body. Reese did the same, letting herself take in the scene. It reminded Reese of a mannequin, which in turn reminded her of zombies and horror films. Both were surreal enough in comparison to this case that the thought made her skin crawl.

Annette Langly had been wrapped from neck to foot in lace (minus her hands, which were left free, and the nails were painted bright red). Her toes were wrapped individually, but the nails were painted the same color as her fingers. The delicate lace was then followed by bright red ribbon wound neatly around her body in _x_ shaped patterns set equidistantly up each leg, a larger one wound across her chest, and tied off in perfect bows at each of her wrists. In her hair were flowers-tiger lilies, daisies, Forget-Me-Nots, and white roses-which made her look like some wild wood nymph who had been caught in a sudden, deadly, frost against the tree.

Her partner shifted and leaned forward.

"Try not to break this one," she said dryly.

"I'm not going t-" Comprehension dawned on him and he looked vaguely guilty for a quarter of a second. "Oh." But he still wanted to touch the body, she could tell. It was in the way he kept shifting forward, trying to figure out something that had struck him as _weird_. Eventually, he'd do it anyway. Reese decided she was going to pretend not to notice this time.

"What _is_ it with you two and jacked up murders?" Tidwell, looking harried as if someone had dragged him away from his coffee without a sip, stood over them, his arms folded. "Do you pass out cards or something? 'Please leave your mess in our yard, hugs and kisses L.A.P.D Homicide'?"

"Yes, that's _exactly_ what we do," Reese said. "In fact, my nights are spent wandering the streets looking for particularly noteworthy creeps and handing them my card." Crews opened his mouth and promptly shut it, raising his latex gloved hands.

"M.E. wants to move the body," Tidwell said, just shaking his head, "you guys finished with it?"

"Yep," she said, rising. The still pale morning light caught the tiny circular pendant she wore as she turned to sweep a glance across the yard. "It looks like he came in from the side, there. Probably through the woods." It was a gated community, though, and supposedly _safe_. She wondered if anyone was truly safe in this world-people liked the the illusion of safety with locked communities and locked houses, privacy screens, and a thousand prisons of their own making. The fact of the matter was that you could put up a thousand safeguards, but if someone was determined to do you harm, there really wasn't all that much to stop them. Determination and ingenuity in the hands of someone smart enough to couple them together were disturbingly all a perp needed to commit a crime like this. She felt the chill work itself down her spine.

Whomever this asshole was, he'd done this before or he'd _practiced_.

"He took her eyes," Crews said, his voice soft, but loud enough to pull her from her thoughts.

Reese looked back at the body and realized that Crews had carefully peeled back a thawed eyelid. _So much for not touching_. Settled in the empty socket was what looked exactly like a peeled grape. In fact, that was exactly what it was-a bloody, peeled grape.

"_Jesus_," Tidwell said, visibly shaken as he took a step back and nearly knocked into the medical examiner's team as they showed up to retrieve the body. "I want this solved. _Now_."

She stood there for a moment, staring, and then wordlessly headed back to her car.


	3. Thinking Sideways

He sat at his desk, absently turning a Granny Smith around and around with his fingertips, half watching Reese as she talked to ViCAP on the phone. He agreed with her—this was sophisticated enough to warrant a ViCAP search, the execution so well done that he had to think, just maybe, their killer had been around the block, had _done_ this before. Or something similar. The Medical Examiner had shifted her cases down and pulled the frozen remains of Annette Langly to the top of her pile. While the woman was being thawed as expertly as possible, Crews had to wonder if she was still alive. What if she was alive and they could ask her what happened? That'd be something. It'd be _crazy_, but it'd definitely be something to go on.

The process in which she'd been frozen seemed extremely controlled. No freezer burn, just white and perfect, with no marks on her that he could see. Crews figured, though, that there would probably be needle marks somewhere. Tiny ones. Reese swivelled in her chair, her expression solemn as she hug up the phone.

They'd sent the paperwork, but she'd called anyway trying to expedite the process. He knew where she was going, now, as she rose.

"Reese?" he asked. "You want me to come?"

"No." She shook her head. "I want you to go interview the neighbors. I'm gonna look through missing persons." He gave her a steady look. "And the EMS feed." She started to turn away, ostensibly to move toward the elevator, but she caught sight of Tidwell's annoyed expression and changed destinations.

Crews bit into the apple and followed.

"You call ViCAP just now?" Crews tilted his head at Tidwell. "I just got a call from a _really_ pissed off FBI agent. I mean, _really_ pissed off. Actually, I'm not even sure if _pissed_ is the right word at all. I don't think there's a word for what she was. Pieca work, this one. You're getting a partner for this one—name's Kateri Mancini."

"A Fed, _great_," Reese said, scowling. "When?"

"She's flying in from D.C., so, it'll be about five hours, give or take. She's bringing files with her. From what I could tell, there are definitely more than one. And Reese?" Tidwell gave her a look that spoke volumes. "I know you're not buddy-buddy with the Feds, given the crap that went down, but...be nice. Or at least be civil. I don't like these goons coming up into my precinct any more than you do, but we got inter-agency cooperation to look after. Be as _diplomatic_ as you possibly can."

"Sure," Reese said, her voice sour. "I'll _behave_." Her expression slid into a thin line. "Feds better not be taking our case away. I want this one." Crews wanted it, too, but he just watched the exchange in silence while he pondered the facts they'd been given and the new information in the form of FBI involvement. That meant state lines had been violated. They'd been violated enough for a D.C. agent to be called down even though they had a branch in town. _That_ was new.

"Guess we'll see when she gets here," he said with a sigh as he massaged his eyes. "You gonna go through the EMS and missing persons or are you gonna stand there and glare at me some more?"

"I can do both," she muttered, and turned briskly, her mind fixed like an arrow on its target. Crews and Tidwell watched her go in silence.

"She's not gonna be nice, is she?" Tidwell asked, half to himself, peering through steepled fingertips.

"Probably not," Crews murmured, then brightened. "I was thinking about the case. The peeled grapes?" Tidwell bit back what looked like nausea. "He didn't really want us finding out about her eyes until later. He kept them for himself. So, Reese plugged that into the search—the missing eyes. I guess he's been around before, practicing somewhere else. It'd make sense. I think there's women out there who aren't dead, maybe, and I think that's what Reese is looking for."

There was a quiet moment where the two men stared at each other.

"I think maybe he's sharing his collection." Crews bit down on the apple thoughtfully and when he spoke, he did so around the piece of fruit. "Like an exhibition. His masterpieces."

"Detective," Tidwell said, "go find me some answers—someone who saw _something_, anything. And you make sure Reese doesn't come unglued with this Fed. You got me?"

"Yeah. I got you." His shoes squeaked a little as he headed toward the elevator. He stopped to make coffee, though, and pitched the thick oily pot of it before he made a new one. Someone would be grateful, but right now, Reese needed a cup. He could tell something about this case was upsetting her, something beyond just the facts. He surgared and creamed the cup, and listened to the sound of the metal spoon colliding with the LAPD mug for a moment.

The TV was on in the break room and he turned up the sound, watching the animated and yet serious newscaster's face. She reported it like a hawk searching for prey, sharp, pointed, and hungry for more. She also looked like she could use something sweet to take the edge of the story away. There was no denying that _this _case was horrifying.

"Early this morning, the body of a young woman was found—" The coffee cup was hot in his hands and he shifted it, the apple still in his mouth. They had a name for him already.

The Ribbon Killer.

Crews shook his head and finished the bite of apple he'd taken. The silence in the bullpen told him that Tidwell had people out on this, canvasing already. But he was interested in the FBI agent who was already on her way. She was bringing them something important, he could _feel_ it like the way the wind shifted before a storm blew in from nowhere.

Crews set the coffee down on a coaster next to Reese, who didn't even look up, and left to find his car. Someone had seen something, somewhere out there. Someone always saw something, dismissed it, and left it for him to find, buried in their memory. He'd find it for Annette Langly, for her parents, and for her mother, who had yet to wake.

He'd find something.

And so would Reese.


	4. Infinity

She didn't notice the coffee until it was cold and she'd gone through at least three hundred pages of reports going back eight years—just to be safe. The lines were starting to blur together and she pinched her nose as she stopped scrolling to write yet another note. Reese had found reports on missing women from seventeen counties, some thirty of them between the ages of twenty-five to thirty-two, all save one were still missing. Correlating dates and places took up most of her time, most of her thought processes, too, but she'd narrowed down the missing persons list to fifteen within the height/weight and hair/eye color ratio. According to the pictures she'd seen at the Langly's house, Annette had been blue eyed. It wasn't much to go on, but she let her gut lead her. An addendum to one woman's file had said that she turned up at a local hospital two years ago without her eyes, and had nearly bled to death as a result. Reese marked it for further investigation, pulled away from the keyboard and scribbled down the woman's name a number before putting in a request for her medical files.

Glancing down at her coffee, she realized that she'd forgotten it yet _again_ and moved into the break room to reheat it, letting herself steep in the information she'd uncovered. Officers came and went around her, the noise flooding in from the bullpen as she watched the twenty-second time tick down. She stared through it and nearly missed the call that buzzed her phone at her belt.

"Reese," she said absently, taking a sip of her coffee.

"You still looking through those reports?" Tidwell, not Crews. And she'd been hoping it was Crews with some decent news. Reese made a face and contemplated her mug for a long moment. The only thing she had was an eyeless woman who might or might not have been a victim.

"Nope." She swallowed the coffee down and let it pull her rising dread down with it. "But I got some promising leads. Found a woman missing her eyes. A missing persons case turned into an assault charge, but they never found the perp. Was gonna go see if I could find her and see if she had anything for us."

"That at least sounds like something." Tidwell sounded like he was in his car and she heard a woman's voice in the background—crisp and decidedly not American. "FBI Agent Mancini landed fifteen minutes ago, we're headed back in from LAX. Crews?"

She scrolled through a few text messages, scanning them for anything positive, but they were mostly dead ends. One neighbor had heard a cat in a trash bin and another swore that he saw a man in a hoodie, but couldn't give them anything more concrete. Not even age or height.

"He's still out there looking," she said quietly. "I should be out there, too."

"Get him back to the office," Tidwell said. "Agent Mancini has something for you both." He hung up abruptly and Reese stared at her phone, shook her head, and dialed Crews. As usual, it took more than a few rings before he answered. She could hear the sound of machinery close by with the sharp chatter of a jackhammer pounding down on concrete.

"Reese? Hold on. I'm going to—get in—" The ambient nose level dropped considerably as she heard his car door slam. "You found something?"

"Two years ago, a woman was found on the East side of L.A., no eyes. She nearly bled to death. I'm pretty sure we need to track her down. Tidwell's got the Fed and is on his way back here." She took a sip of coffee before sifting through a preliminary report that she'd found on her desk. "M.E. Still isn't finished with Annette's autopsy, but the physical examination showed needle marks and bruising on her arms. They were covered up with foundation and talc powder. Makes me wonder if this guy worked the mortuary scene." She skimmed over the rest of the report, but there wasn't much there. "It looks like the tox screen is going to take awhile. She's still pretty frozen."

"You need me to come back in?" he asked, but she knew he was already driving back.

"Yep. We're supposed to meet with Mancini ASAP," Reese murmured, before printing out the reports she still wanted to go over. "It sounds like she's got files for us, too." At this point, with what little they had from the extremely clean scene, she wasn't sure she'd be entirely displeased as long as the woman gave them something to help. Reese almost hung up on him when another detective handed her a page.

"You still there?"

"Mm. CSU report."

"They found something."

"Not sure what good it's going to do. The only foreign fiber they found was horse hair. White horse hair." She leaned against her desk and sat, frowning at the paper.

"I'm coming up the stairs," Crews said and then hung up.

_Horse hair?_

Reese glanced out the window at the bright blue sky and wondered what the hell kind of case had landed in their laps. No real witnesses, no real evidence, and a dead woman with no eyes. When the elevator doors opened, she expected to see Crews, but the shock of red hair wasn't his. Kateri Mancini was a small woman, dressed in a black suit with a bright turquoise blouse, her hair was clipped short, emphasizing her narrow features and her pale blue eyes. She held her briefcase like it contained a treasury of secrets and her knuckles were white.

Their eyes met.

"Detective Reese," she said, her voice crisp and surprisingly Irish. "I've been told your partner is on his way, then?"

"He's on his way up," Reese said, her eyebrows arching. "Knowing him, he took the stairs."

"Good." Her blue eyes traveled to Tidwell's. "I can commandeer a conference room? We're going to need it."

"Sure," Tidwell said, nodding as he shifted his weight apprehensively. "You need anything from the tech department?" Mancini shook her head and her hand tightened around the handle of her briefcase again. "Okay, then. After you."

The woman paused as the stairwell door eased open, her eyes flicking to wander over Crews as he breezed in. Reese thought she was going to say something, but she turned away to follow Tidwell, leaving her with Crews. He pursed his lips for a moment and she arched her eyebrows before shrugging. She didn't know what the hell any of this was about, either.

Behind the closed conference room doors, the busy sounds of the world outside were muted. Far below them, the city went about its business in the brilliant light of day, but somewhere in the ordinary world with its ordinary faces was a murderer. He'd bought a paper, coffee, had lunch, walked across a street, gone grocery shopping, and blended in with everyone. The problem with highly intelligent criminals was the fact that they knew how to be quiet, calm, and attract no attention to themselves. This one was different—she could almost taste that in the air.

Kateri Mancini opened up her briefcase against the long, polished table without a word and began to pull case files from it. Each was lined up precisely next to another, perfectly spaced, until she had all thirteen of the out. Her eyes flicked between Crews and Reese as she leaned into the table, her expression earnest.

"I'm not taking your case from you," she said. "In fact, my SAC didn't even want me to come down here. I had to convince him that what I had was pertinent to your investigation. Your search sent up red flags for me as I've been trying to find similar elements for the last eight years. They crop up here and there every few years or so. Sometimes inexpertly frozen, sometimes they've lost an eye before he's killed them. _Sometimes_, they're killed in different ways, but—" Mancini half shrugged. "It's him. I _know_ it's him. And I'm here to help you put him where he belongs."

Reese felt whatever defensiveness she had drop immediately.

"This will be your collar," Mancini added. "I'm...I don't even need the credit. They tried to close the case on me several times, but I haven't let them. There's too many elements that line up, too many coincidences. He's a man of details, Detectives, a man of compulsion. A man who needs to leave his mark."

She began to pull photos from each folder. The sun glinted off the glossy paper and all of them, Tidwell included, leaned forward. Each of the thirteen photos had a tiny wound shaped like the infinity symbol at the base of the skull. Reese studied it and realized it wasn't a _wound_, it was a brand.

She dug through the preliminary examination file the M.E.'s office had sent her way and flipped to the section on identifying marks. Pulling it out, she laid the photo down next to the others, her expression grim.

Nestled at the base of Annette Langly's skull was a perfect replica of the infinity symbol.


	5. On A Wing

"We hadn't heard from her in two months." Jim Langly sat beside his wife's hospital bed, staring at his hands. "I-I assumed she was busy. You know, _kids_. They don't call when they get busy, especially if they're nurses."

He lifted his hands and Crews watched them shake before he dropped them into his lap.

"And then this. All of this. _My family_." He could see it in Jim's face, the weight that pulled him down. His daughter was dead, his wife was in a coma. He recounted every moment from when he woke to his wife's screams to the moment he arrived at the hospital. Reese leaned up against the door, her back against it as if she was trying to melt through it to the the other side.

"I think you should go," Jim said softly. "Go catch this-" The wave was ineffectual, half-hearted, and he choked back tears.

Crews rose.

"One more question," Reese said. "Did she have any identifying marks? Scars?"

"I wish I could say I saw something," he said. "But I didn't. I didn't see anything, hear anything. I- No. Not a scar on her body. No surgeries, no broken bones, either. Annette's very careful."

She nodded.

"We'll do everything we can." Reese's voice sounded from behind him. "We'll find who did this." The quiet conviction in her voice was fierce and it lasted all the way to the car. She sat in the driver's seat, motionless, her eyes slit.

"You're thinking about Kelly Marsden." Her fingers curled around the steering wheel and he could almost feet the tension radiating from her body. "You're thinking she can help." Reese punched out a text and got a triple beep in respsonse.

"Mancini is going to meet us there. In fact, she's been there for the last fifteen minutes," she said, flashing her phone at him. They shared a look and she let out a slow sigh. "The eyes bother me. Taking her eyes _bothers_ me, okay?"

"Eyes are the windows to the soul, Reese." Her head bounced slightly as she fell back against the head rest. He reached to squeeze her elbow. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking this case means I'm gonna get two hours of sleep in the next week," she said, scowling as she started the car. "And I'm thinking Annette is on a list of women, Crews. Bet the one we're seeing is on that list, too."

Crews opened his mouth to respond, but his phone rang.

Bobby.

"We got a real big problem, Charlie," Bobby said, as Crews put him on speakerphone. "Kelly Marsden, your interview? She'd dead. That Fed that got sent? Pretty sure she was here too."

Reese pulled out of the parking spot and hit the lights, her expression grim.

"We're on our way. Bobby, you tell Mancini to stay put." Bobby started to say something and the phone was pulled away-Crews could hear it fumble.

"I saw him. I _saw_ him, Detective." Her voice was high, half excited, half terrified. Kateri Mancini had seen their perp exiting a crime scene. "I should have been earlier. If I'd been a few minutes earlier-"

"Stay with Bobby," Crews said as Reese angled them around another corner, heading toward the Marsden house.

"You don't understand." Mancini's voice broke. "He took my gun and he _let me see him_."

"Give Bobby the phone back, Agent," Crews said very gently. Bobby said something he couldn't hear, but came back on the line as Reese blew through a red light. "Don't let her out of your sight."

"I got her. She's pretty shaken up. Blood all over her. I don't think she got hit, though." The wail of an ambulance drowned Bobby's voice out, but that was fine. Reese pulled up in front of two cop cars and the ambulance. Crews was out of the car almost before it had stopped, and shielded his face from the dying sun.

The FBI agent sat on Kelly Marsden's front steps, staring, her expression one of sheer concentration. He knew that look. It was the look of someone trying to memorize the details of one moment in time. He crouched next to her and she half turned her face toward him.

"He said he was making angels," she whispered.


End file.
